Description:
This is an ongoing exploratory learning/ current events exercise where students analyze news sources and opinion articles. Goal:
Encourage students to read newspapers and to watch network and local news reports. This increases critical thinking skills and encourages analysis and criticism. Students are expected to express opinions with supporting ideas. Objectives: Students will be able to: · Analyze and critique internet news articles and news video by compare/contrast of their content and presentation. · Identify key concepts in a selected news article. · Identify and define words for vocabulary list. · Identify what is good biased and unbiased writing. · Learn technology standards via general use of the netbook, specifically cut copy and paste, internet searching, using cloud-computing based services, and basic MS Word skills. Procedure:
This is a weekly activity. Start by having students copy articles from news websites in Google reader that they find interesting or important to them, placing them in a word document file to collect over the course of the year. Ask students to analyze the stories, using the five W’s and one H (WHO, What, When, Where and How and Why) as a basis for analyzing them. Other questions to consider will be the implications of said story on local and world events and how important this information is to society as a whole. As time goes on, I branch from this and have students do the following: My View
Students take their opinions and/or analysis of the article and rewrite it from another point of view.
How do the other news sources cover this?
Students compare online news coverage to radio/television coverage of the same story.
Illustrate it! Students create a cartoon on a current news topic. Try www.makebeliefscomix.com as a resource to help you do this.
Be the Journalist Students can write editorials and letters to the local newspaper. Also, encourage students to write letters to elected officials on a subject
Look Ma, I’m on TV!
Students will create a video newscast that talks about issues in the student’s news scrapbook.
You Versus the World
Take a look at the same news story from a global POV and a local POV and compare/contrast their differences.
Spellchecker
Read through several news stories and attempt to locate at least 5 errors, be they misspellings or grammar errors. This can be turned into a competition to see who finds 5 errors first.
In the Eye of the Beholder
Take a look at a news story told by 2 different news sources (ex…. Cnn or Fox news) explain how they are different, citing specific examples. Talk about why the writers chose their points of view.
Information’s Counterfeiters: Propaganda, Misinformation, and Disinformation
Describe the differences between these three different types of non-fact based information. Find examples on the internet of at least 1 to 3 of these counterfeiters.
And Now for Something Completely Different
Take a look at 2 types of news stories: a straight-up unbiased news story and an opinion piece written about the same incident/ news story. Write a response describing how the articles compare or contrast.
Post Your Comments Here
In Google reader people will post comments at the end of many of the stories. Read the comments and write about how those comments reflect the ideas written about in the story or whether they do not.
Current Events Year-Long Project
Description:
This is an ongoing exploratory learning/ current events exercise where students analyze news sources and opinion articles.
Goal:
Encourage students to read newspapers and to watch network and local news reports. This increases critical thinking skills and encourages analysis and criticism. Students are expected to express opinions with supporting ideas.
Objectives: Students will be able to:
· Analyze and critique internet news articles and news video by compare/contrast of their content and presentation.
· Identify key concepts in a selected news article.
· Identify and define words for vocabulary list.
· Identify what is good biased and unbiased writing.
· Learn technology standards via general use of the netbook, specifically cut copy and paste, internet searching, using cloud-computing based services, and basic MS Word skills.
Procedure:
This is a weekly activity. Start by having students copy articles from news websites in Google reader that they find interesting or important to them, placing them in a word document file to collect over the course of the year. Ask students to analyze the stories, using the five W’s and one H (WHO, What, When, Where and How and Why) as a basis for analyzing them. Other questions to consider will be the implications of said story on local and world events and how important this information is to society as a whole.
As time goes on, I branch from this and have students do the following:
My View
Students take their opinions and/or analysis of the article and rewrite it from another point of view.
How do the other news sources cover this?
Students compare online news coverage to radio/television coverage of the same story.
Illustrate it!
Students create a cartoon on a current news topic. Try www.makebeliefscomix.com as a resource to help you do this.
Be the Journalist
Students can write editorials and letters to the local newspaper. Also, encourage students to write letters to elected officials on a subject
Look Ma, I’m on TV!
Students will create a video newscast that talks about issues in the student’s news scrapbook.
You Versus the World
Take a look at the same news story from a global POV and a local POV and compare/contrast their differences.
Spellchecker
Read through several news stories and attempt to locate at least 5 errors, be they misspellings or grammar errors. This can be turned into a competition to see who finds 5 errors first.
In the Eye of the Beholder
Take a look at a news story told by 2 different news sources (ex…. Cnn or Fox news) explain how they are different, citing specific examples. Talk about why the writers chose their points of view.
Information’s Counterfeiters: Propaganda, Misinformation, and Disinformation
Describe the differences between these three different types of non-fact based information. Find examples on the internet of at least 1 to 3 of these counterfeiters.
And Now for Something Completely Different
Take a look at 2 types of news stories: a straight-up unbiased news story and an opinion piece written about the same incident/ news story. Write a response describing how the articles compare or contrast.
Post Your Comments Here
In Google reader people will post comments at the end of many of the stories. Read the comments and write about how those comments reflect the ideas written about in the story or whether they do not.